Thursday, May 5, 2011

#fedora - You are always wrong

EDIT: Please note that obviously the people in #fedora are not representative of the fedora community as a whole. This is just me blowing off steam late at night after hardware failure and a poor experience.

Fair warning - I am about to go off on a rant here.

I discovered this evening much to my dismay that the year and a half old western digital hard drive in my main laptop is dieing. All three of the Linux installs on the system failed in various ways (typically a sign of a hardware issue) so I grabbed the closest live CD and popped it in. Now, it's been awhile since I've burned a live CD so the top disc in my spindle was an old Fedora 13 disc. After the system booted up, I connected to my wireless internet and was on my way.

There was a few gigs of data on the drive I didn't have backed up, so I opened nautilus and navigated to my files.

Ahh right - the permissions of the hard drive made it so I could not read certain folders I needed access to. Not a problem, I'll just launch the file manager as root. I opened a terminal, typed in su followed by nautilus and was greet by a crash message.

Ahh right - nautilus doesn't like to be opened as super user if I recall correctly. It had been awhile since I had used a non-sudo distro, so I hopped into #fedora on freenode to ask how I could go about launching the file manager as super user.

Dear lord was that a mistake.

Less than a minute in the #fedora channel was enough to remind me why Fedora 13 was the last Fedora revision I had burned. I've found that whenever I am foolish enough to ask a question in #fedora, instead of getting help with what I have asked, I am bombarded with questions on why I am trying to do what I am doing. Even after informing them that I would just like to accomplish what I have asked, I was informed I was wrong and that I should do something completely different (and that would take far longer than I wanted with a dieing hard disc).

I would just like to take a moment to say to all the self proclaimed Linux help nazis out there:

You are not God's gift to your Linux help channel.

When a person asks a question, if you are not going to help - then don't. When someone seems to be asking an odd question - odds are you don't know everything about their story. If their question is truly odd, perhaps just throw a mention of warning after helping them accomplish their task.

Needless to say I left #fedora after a few mind numbing moments and simply installed pcmanfm (which launched as super user just fine).

Whew. I apologize if you are a decent person who really tries to help (instead of criticize) in #fedora on freenode. It just seems more often than not in the four years I've been using Linux as my primary operating system I have always met with resistance in that channel.

My data is all recovered from the drive now and I am happily headed back to apt-get land. If I ever give yum a try again it will definitely be with Fuduntu or Fusion and not with normal Fedora ever.

96 comments:

That is something that drives me absolutely insane. Nobody should care why you want to do what it is that you are asking unless it is something that is going to make your computer catch fire or explode.

I see the same thing all the time on different forums or chat channels for different distros. This issue is far past just Fedora. Someone asks a question in various chanels or forums that might even be so slightly out of the ordinary and so many times they dont answer the question but rather give the famous response..."why would you want to do that?" and then blast you or give you miles of instructions of how to do something totally different that you arent interested in.

RETARDED!!!

Unfortunately, these asses are all over the Linux world and they just need to either help by answering the question or just keeping their mouths shut.

Agreed. This is why I do little more than check Fedora out occasionally, trying to get any useful info from it's "community" is frakking painful. I got banned from their forum for daring to insist on doing what i wanted to do, and not what they kept insisting I should do. When I told them it was my machine, and my choice, and thanks for the advice, but could someone, y'know, actually answer my question, I found myself banned after daring to tell a moderator to stop telling me what to do,that it wasn't their machine. So much for "choice" over there. Arsehats.

Fedora is far from alone in this, and people need to quit questioning everything you want to do. Again, it's your machine, you can do whatever the hell you want with it. Fedora isn't alone in this, but the level of ego and obnoxiousness is far too great to bother with. I gave up on it. What's the point in having choice if everyone else wants to deny you yours?

I've been using Fedora for as long as it has existed, and Red Hat before that (back to the 4.0 days). My background lets me accomplish what I need to without assistance - except for one time.

I did the same as you, hopped on #fedora and asked a question. I was bombarded by people telling me that not only what I wanted to do was a waste of time, it was impossible. When I tried to explain my background, I was actually ridiculed, as if anyone with experience asking a question was an obvious troll.

I ended up figuring out what I needed to do on my own, as you did. I like the Fedora distribution, but the people that claim to offer support for it are assholes.

I agree. The linux community in general was friendlier couple of years ago. I've had a very good Fedora community experience a few years back, but perhaps that has changed?I know my community has changed - a few years back, people were friendly. Basically answered any noob question that were out there.But now, if you ask something, the chance is big that some self-proclaimed dude (usually a sub-forum moderator) yells : "USE THE SEARCH FUNCTION!!", "Format your text properly before posting!!" etc. Not a very welcoming attitude for new user or existing users.

Always have a copy of Parted Magic. Fast, effective, plenty of tools (even clonezilla included) and uses pcmanfm as its file manager. It was rather unfortunate for you to have to use fedora as a rescue disc :-)

Enough with the hate already.Yes, Jeff had a bad experience, and apparently others have as well.I've never asked a question on #Fedora, but people the official forums have always been helpful and kind to me.The Fedora community is not made up of a-holes and there's no reason to insult everyone because a few people have been stupid.

And asking why someone wants to perform a certain task doesn't have to be a bad thing. Perhaps there's an easier way to accomplish the same task.

I do agree with you that if someone likes to do something in there own, helper should just give him a tip how to do it. But in is also nice if someone points out that there is some other way to do the same thing. But it should never be enforced.

In the other hand I understand helpers that would like to know "what would you like to do". The main principle:1. Define a problem: I would like to access my data on broken hard-disk and copy files to safe location.2. Then define what is your suggested path to solve the problem (problem from step 1) and were you need a help: I would like to open file manager with super-user rights. Can you please help me with the command?

So the main principle is to define a "PROBLEM" and "PATH YOU ARE INTO TO SOLVE A PROBLEM".

Dirk - The people on the Fedora Forum are helpful, as long as they are in control. These egotistical douche bags only care about stroking their egos, they don't care about helping the community. Challenge them on anything they say, and see for yourself.

I'm glad that if I ever want to switch to Fedora/RHEL at any point, I have a good friend of mine who is extremely experienced with Fedora/RHEL/CentOS and is certainly not like the people on #fedora.--a Linux Mint user since 2009 May 1

This is something that drives me mad about anything, not just Fedora. Who gives a damn why I want to do it? Screw you! Help me or shut the hell up! Sometimes I google something and find someone asking the same question I asked...I go to the replies and see everyone asking why and giving their opinion about what he wants to do BUT NO ONE EXPLAINING WHY!

Jeff. Perhaps YOUR ego is partially at fault. Obviously, there were other ways offered to fix the problem, but YOUR ego was attached to the only solution you envisioned. Perhaps we should have a post titled ... "Jeff Hoogland is never wrong"?

Please stop generalizing. IRC is IRC. You know that. You do a great disservice to the linux community by generalizing based on select experiences. And your post here is inviting the same.

HALLELUJAH BROTHER! Thats my biggest grip too, people that treat you like an ___hole because you ask what THEY think is a stupid question. Thats why so many people are still using Windows, they get help.

What it came down to this user wanted to do things the way they wanted to do it, no matter if it was safe or not. The People who help in the #fedora channel are not going to hand out such advise. This person was even told about mc. Because his hardware was dying and he was frustrated he lashed out against the #fedora channel and started attacking the same people willing to help him.

The interesting thing about these people that always assume they are smarter than everyone else is that they are becoming less and less important and that is making them angrier and angrier. Rather than saying "People who help in the #fedora channel are not going to hand out such advise" - they should hand out the advice with a warning label. To simply tell them they are wrong is irresponsible, and stupid because they don't understand the problem. Sometimes, yes it is bad advice, but sometimes it is not and it is not up to them do make that decision.

One thing to remember, is that these people often have no social skills so it shouldn't be a surprise that they have no customer service skills either.

The problem is hardly limited to Fedora. I've run into the same thing trying to get Debian and Ubuntu information. (Not that we care, but it also happens in the M$ world.) I would like people who start their "response" with "I don't know ..." or "I haven't used ..." to not waste bandwidth.

@npatricksmith Obviously this is not an isolated occurrence though. Look at the slew of comments above saying the same thing I did in the post...

Even when I've asked in #Fedora something as simple as HOWTO install the nvidia driver from the vendor provided .bin - I've been told this method is wrong and I have to use RPM fusion (I wanted to use the .bin because RPM fusion is slow to update to the latest versions at times).

@Anonymous I didn't want to install "mc". I should be able to open *any* file manager as root. In fact, saying one file manager is safe to open as root while another isn't is truly dumb.

Although, I must say that is another thing I noticed - why are you insistent upon one particular solution and not open to others? I mean, what's more important, the ends or the means?Furthermore, here's the obligatory xkcd.--a Linux Mint user since 2009 May 1

I agree with you to a point. There are times when I am helping people and I need to know the situation to be able to help in the best way possible. Sometimes asking "why?" is needed. One of the best examples of this is my professor would say to me "Show me it broken, because if you show me it not broken, I can't help you".

I believe most help channels are very helpful now. It used to be a nightmare asking for help, but now it seems that the Linux geeks have come around and understand that if they help people, then those people will help others and so on. The community is the best tool to grow the community.

@PV Other ideas that take about the same amount of work I am open to. What I did not feel like doing was sorting through my data via the CLI or copying the entire drive except for /usr and /var. Which where the suggestions from those informing me opening a file manager as root was "wrong".

I only needed a few gigs of files (out of the several hundred) that where not backed up.

First, let me say I'm sorry you had a bad time in #fedora. We do work to improve things as best we can. :)

To Jeff and the folks who commented to just provide the information without a problem description, there's at least 3 issues I see with that off the top of my head:

1) There's no way to tell on irc who is an experenced Linux user and who is brand new. So, you might be savvy and know that you want to run nautilus as root to copy some files, but someone else may just not understand the permissions model and want to run as root all the time. They may well come back in a few days with "hey, I threw this /usr folder in the trash and now things don't work."

2. This sort of thing is very often a X-Y problem. See: http://www.perlmonks.org/index.pl?node_id=542341ie, you have decided you need to use Y and ask about that, when really if you described the problem (X) you have, people could suggest better/different/alternative ways that may be easier. I'm not saying this was the case with you, but please understand that #fedora gets tons of these all the time and your case looks like one of those from a quick glance.

3. Answering someone with "you do that by doing $foo" is great, but if you also add "and you can read about $foo in 'man $foo' or at howto xyz" is better. If you don't know the problem however, it's hard to point people to docs other than the tool they have perhaps incorrecty chosen for the job. If you have the problem description you could point them at something much better and they can learn and help themselves next time.

Given the description of the problem here, I would suggest setting up sudo (would just take 1 minute) and running it from that.

Please do keep in mind that #fedora is a general support channel. I hope you can see some of the other side of things too...

About ten years ago, I swore never to use Debian again (Potato at the time, the one before Woody) after a hot flamefest on irc.debian.org#debian. At the time, I thought (probably rightly so) that this IRC channel alone is a gathering of at least 50% of FOSS ayatollahs. You know, these bearded guys that make you feel your sheer existence is wrong.

But then, with the years, I've learned to carefully choose my communication channels. For example, some Ubuntu forums contain just a plethora of wrong information, but the Ubuntu Users mailing list is an excellent source for information. As for Fedora, I can only suggest the online *forums*, where the tone is competent and polite.

Sorry to say it, but they were right. Copying those files under root in Nautilus was not good idea at all. You most probably caused yourself a problem with file attributes. In addition, your obvious lack of knowledge probably made those people simply not to help you. You would give a loaded gun to someone who is obviously trying to shoot himself?

I will give you the solution to your Nautilus issue as you already caused yourself all the harm. 1) beesu nautilus should work, 2) su --login should also work. Correct solution to your issue would be for example cp -Rdp /source/* /target

I miss the times when most Linux users knew something about the system and the newcomers had the opportunity to learn. Of course these times are gone as most people are like you, Jeff - fast and dirty solution + yelling at anyone with superior knowledge for being arrogant.

You sir just further prove my point. Yes, I am ignorant and wrong because I wanted quick and dirty solution to simply get my few bits of data to a working drive.

I never said their solution was wrong, nor did I even say that mine was better. What did I know was that what I wanted to do would work. I knew that my data was in so many different places that it would be far faster for me to use a GUI file manager than to hunt through a terminal for it.

I've never said "I am always right" or "I know best". What I did say is that I knew what I wanted to do and as it was my hardware I believe I am allowed to do what I want. If you don't want to help me do that, fine don't. At the same time though you don't need be a jerk.

You can improve the situation by hanging out in #fedora and answering other people's questions. You'll face pushback from other members of the channel but you will be at least making the situation better...

What you've seen is a problem and there are many perspectives to it. For what it is worth I have seen this behaviour when technical people answer questions. Usually the longer they've been technical, the more chance they will reply with a "why are you doing that?" just in case you're asking the wrong question.

1) Someone asking a technical question wants a *helpful* answer to that question. They rarely ever want to be asked more questions or to spend 2 hours trying lots of different things to solve the problem. They usually don't want to be told "no" either.

2) When you are answering a technical question there is a strong chance that what you will say first will be wrong, singularly unhelpful or downright dangerous: e.g. someone asks "How do I delete a file?" and you give the reply "rm nameoffile". This is unhelpful most of the time (the user doesn't want to use the command-line, the user is trying to delete a file that requires root privileges, the user is not using Unix-like system, the user is about to delete a very important file etc.).

These together can encourage certain behaviour. After being burned by so many people saying "Why don't you just answer the question" some of the nicer people give up answering questions. Why do something that people are going to berate you about? Those that remain tend to be slightly meaner and more set in their ways knowing all too well the cases where someone asked for something that wound up hurting them.

Because situations vary, the correct response must also vary. People are human beings not robots so it usually helps to find out why someone is doing. You can't expect someone to have read a FAQ, you can't expect them to know how to read your answer and as such answering a question well requires huge amounts of time...

Niceness needs to be encouraged - it is not enough to punish nastiness. There are no easy answers though and a nice person who give you a wrong answer is just as bad as a nasty person who gives you no answer.

After some thought on my comment I came to the conclusion that recently there seems to be a none ability to just answer the question. Unless I really have to I don't bother asking on Forums but mostly get the answer I want (never tried IRC channels as I see those for places of advance people). I've had better results on the Fedora forums but the uduntu forums appear to have got very lazy...ask how to do something and all you get is 'google is friend'..for Christ sake people, if thats all your going to say don't bother!

So I agree with Jeff, just answer the question although it may be worth trying other suggestions.

Dude, it's hard to ask intelligent questions on IRC. People always assume you're an idiot. I dunno, but I always have problems asking questions in #git, #httpd, #tomcat, #android, etc on freenode...

The other day I tried to ask "What is actually happening when we root Android?" and of course the entire peanut gallery told me it allows us to install and remove system apps, etc. Nevermind that I wanted a technical explanation, haha. It took 15 minutes for me to establish that I was a *nix systems administrator but new to Android, and finally we established that a setuid binary called `su` is copied to /system/xbin and, despite it's name, actually behaves similar to `sudo` and requires SuperUser.apk for authentication, as Android does not use /etc/passwd or shadow. Maybe it's the English language... hahaah. I wouldn't know, I don't speak anything else.

For some reason people always feel empowered when they are sitting in their parents' basements AHHAHHA

Fedoraforum is great. I have at many occasions wanted solutions for many problems. At fedorforum they almost allways help you to solve any issue "the right way". In the long term I do really believe that is the correct procedure. If you want to do thing the "non Unix way" go and use Ubuntu.

Agree 100%. I recently converted from debian to fedora. Spent some time one weekend on #fedora when I was having an issue. They were exactly as you describe. What a waste of time.

The losers with the "why are you doing that?" replies fancy themselves experts but they virtually never know the answer to your original question And they pretty much never end-up contributing anything useful to the discussion.

You were trying to run Nautilus with Jeff's path. You should have logged on as root with root's pathsu -password

and then called Nautilus. Since you had a terminal going, you might also have used chmod.

By the way this question gets asked on the fedora forums now and then. Several threads answer it. As a developer, you didn't think to try a search engine?

Please don't mistake the IRC channel, or the forums for "The Fedora Community"Many of us do not use IRC and many are not forum members.

Lastly, let's not give too much creedence to people who complain that users of a forum are Assholes, while telling us that they were banned from that forum for using such gems as "Screw you! Help me or shut the hell up!" on a moderator.

First off let me just say as a proud member of the Fedora community.. I'm sorry that you had a bad experience.

Having said that I would like to reiterate as many have stated, IRC is not an accurate representation of the Fedora community as a whole. Your experience is however a closer representation of IRC as a whole.

As someone above has mentioned, the Fedora forums are very helpful. Please give them a try as well when and if you can.

And finally, a small correction that may benefit you in the future...

You said:

"It had been awhile since I had used a non-sudo distro"

Fedora is not a non-sudo distro.I use sudo almost every day on my laptop.

As an Admin at FedoraForum.org, I'd like to mention that there are clear Posting Rules on the Forum which are easy to follow. We're just users helping users, no paid people involved, and we'd just appreciate polite language and reasonable courtesy in the posts.

If anyone does receive a ban, they're entitled to state their case and then a vote is taken on the duration of the time-out. Spammers don't get a vote, of course!

As far as having your reasons questioned, you really should expect that in a Forum when your idea is outside of the norm. It just points out that there's another, more usual way of handling things. For instance, FedoraProject has tried to block you from logging in as root. There's ways around the block, but members will probably caution you that you can screw up the entire machine with one wrong entry, vs. using a terminal and doing individual commands as "su -".

And, finally, you have to realize that Forums are just groups of individuals with a single interest. The Staff mods the Forum, but can't teach manners to members. If someone with great knowledge is abrupt in their response, just thank them anyway. They probably helped you, but you don't have to add them to the Xmas Card list!

ferntreeI am a newbie as far as Linux is concerned. I agree with the moderators that bitching on the forums is just blowing off steam after a bad day and doing it with objectionable language and in an abusive way is not going to make people want to help them ever! They should find a job in parliament instead.

I was sitting here thinking about what the important lesson in all of this is for us as members of the Linux Community (not just Fedora). I came to the conclusion that I need to be sure when someone asks a question of me regarding Linux, regardless of their experience level, or what I think of the actual question, it is important that I respond in a helpful and caring manner. I need to keep in mind that I am an ambassador for Linux, and act appropriately.Just my two cents.

It is too bad that you continually feel a need to post hyper-sensitive rants against people you disagree with. As a leader of your own distro it is disappointing and childish to paint the Fedora community at large as hostile or unwelcoming. Just because a group of volunteers didn't behave in the manner you wished does not make them wrong. The only take-away for me from this article is your thin skin and temper.

I respectfully disagree. The IRC channel and the forum channels are the reflection of the distro's community. They reflect the distro's core ideas, or how much the community adheres to those core ideas. A photo of multi-ethnic members holding hands doesn't cut it. You try asking questions in the forums, that's how you know they're for real.

It's a psychological aberration caused by the anonymous nature of the net. It's by no means restricted, as others have observed, to Linux.

I've had Moderators delete perfectly innocent posts as retaliation for questioning their judgement.I've had people on software channels answer technical questions with "well it works on my system".The net brings out the true personality and unfortunately, some people are just rude and immature. For some bizarre reason there seems to be little in the way of social policing online. If you went to a shop and received the same treatment the chances are that the offending person would be fired, but online, it all seems to slip past unchallenged. It's always "somebody else's responsibility" to deal with the snipers.

Unfortunately, #fedora is pretty awful - even for Fedora developers. People like Kevin, who commented earlier, are absolute stars and are the only reason it has good moments. I could name six others off the top of my head who regularly insult, cajole and patronise visitors.

The design of the channel is pretty poor, imho. The operators should be there simply to ensure the channel is civil, but sadly they tend to be a large source of the incivility. They are also the people who tend to answer questions, and can get quite testy when other people correct them - treating it as some kind of disciplinary offence, even though the information they give out is not always best quality.

What is increasingly striking is the number of operators who simply do not like Fedora as it ships by default. They bad-mouth PulseAudio, udev, DBus, NetworkManager, and now systemd and GNOME 3.

There is now a feedback trac for the IRC sig. I haven't many productive conclusions from negative feedback, but at least it's being documented.

Absolute props to those people on #fedora who *are* helpful and raise the standard of the channel by their contributions.

I switched to fedora view years ago because my teacher (now a colegue and a fried) uses it. And i found it ok to be so. Because u actually have pretty much of good documentation on fedora and redhat/centos/scientifically. But i still miss ubuntu forum and irc channel. That were always friendly. Not like fedoras one. When they only can say rtfm. Ohh, thank you very much. Like, why would i come to irc channel if i can rtfm..

Fewt, I don't think you REALLY want me to publish your comments, Private Messages, etc. They aren't something that you should be proud of and I'm certain that many words would be censored.

That said, here's the message of mine that you were referring to:

"I hope you understand my message there. Neither one of you guys did anything to improve your status in the Forum or in Fedora and I am not going to tolerate any further abuse of the Posting Rules.

What's that mean? Well, ***** may have a short fuse but this is the first time in many years that he's gotten hot under the collar with anyone. He is perhaps the most talented person I know and devotes countless hours to Fedora and the Forum, including ridding it of spam. So, he's not going anywhere.

You are a new member who's got something to gain by being on the Forum and want to see your distro succeed. That's fine. Now read Posting Rule #1 . I don't care who started the fight or why. You're the one who's going to be removed if you continue. Yep, life ain't fair and neither am I.

All that said, I hope that you will continue to contribute and post. If there are problems, they're best solved by PM with anyone, including Staff, just as I'm attempting to do now. "

@Bob - "I don't care who started the fight or why. You're the one who's going to be removed if you continue. Yep, life ain't fair and neither am I."

You really still don't see the problem with your words which is in itself the problem.

"I don't think you REALLY want me to publish your comments, Private Messages, etc. They aren't something that you should be proud of and I'm certain that many words would be censored."

ooooh threats! I bet it made you feel good to get that out. Why would I be ashamed of what I said, when all of it was true. Your moderation staff didn't do anything but sit back and watch your senior member abuse my thread, and oh noes I cussed at unnamed admin it so I was banned!

If anyone should be ashamed, it's you (and the other unnamed administrator), but if you did publish my PMs (which would be a blatant abuse of power) you'd just find that I have already said something like that.

Why did you bleep the name? By the way I saw that he was talking smack in another forum about me a few days ago but the mods there for some reason didn't put up with it. Go figure.

I do support in winehq channels. Yes its annoying want happens in the fedora channels. But it took us quite a while to get the Ubuntu irc channel trained don't try to answer wine problems forward it to us.

Fedora channel for all there faults. Normally does pass people onto other channels.

I know for sure I have upset some users in winehq. Particular things make no secuirty sense. Like running applications from NTFS with wine or worse of all run wine as root.

Problem as hard as it sounds. When you get a massive response that something should be done a different way. Sometimes they are right.

This problem the person run into has a historic bug from hell. Mount with uid and gid what by spec mount should be able todo on everything. Cannot be done on ext and xfs filesystems. If the historic bug from hell did not exist it would have been simple remount with user and group overrided and backup.

Since there a historic bug from hell you just walked into hack central. Their are equal historic bugs from hell on all platforms. Ask about them at you own risk.

http://code.google.com/p/bindfs/http://www.cs.helsinki.fi/u/partel/bindfs_docs/bindfs.1.htmlBest hack I have found. If you don't need the permissions. yep mount the drive then bindfs it to another location with the permissions user and group overridden. Then start coping data with what ever tool you like. I find this extremely useful for using k3b or the like to rip key parts out to disk. Due to the bug from hell its a double mount with one done by a fuse module. That should have been do able by one mount with options.

This is also less of risk to system since amount of code running with high privilege is limited.

Ok, bottom line, we're using the gui. Linux is simply the underlying system, and the cli is mostly an unknown. The permissions model is needed in the long run, _however_, in an emergency, it is a major impediment. Jeff was in an emergency situation. There were no fears of 'the bogey man' causing a stack overflow & stealing the root login (or whatever). There was simply the need for quick action to save some files. FWIW, mc is my first install on a new system.. I do this, not because mc is so wonderful - its shortcomings often drive me insane, but because of the greater shortcomings of Gnome (note 1). There is _no_ good reason to block root running nautilus. None. The decision requires conscious action. If a user chooses it, it must be needed. One of my many pet peeves is programmers, not at the scene, trying to decide what actions will be dis-allowed users, as opposed to trying to decide how to better enable that action. If there is a better way, make that way easier to use, people will use it. Programmers shouldn't fall for the easy method of blocking one way to compensate for ones lack of ability to improve the usability of another.

Installing sudo is _not_ a one minute operation.. unless you're an expert who has set it up & used it on a number of systems. For many, it is a complete unknown - even when known, it can require some time to remember how to allow the program you want _now_. Also, since the gui is the system, the sudo method chosen must have a gui access point as well as a gui configuration window, or else it does not exist. I see no "Gksudo" in my gnome menu, hence, it does not exist. Gui users _DO NOT_ know all the possible cli commands off the top of their head, & the f'ing manual does _not_ teach what is needed. At best, it simply refreshes the memory of one who already knows the command. To recommend a questioning user RTFM is one of the worst forms of mental masturbation imaginable, and one the ego tripping 'support trolls' use often.

Don't get me wrong. I have seen good responses. I have even seen bad responses given in good faith. But way too many are simply the afore mentioned 'mental masturbation'.. I have no intention of aiding another in that.

As Jeff said, this post is not directed towards those who know Linux/Gnome/KDE etc & _really_ want to help. It is directed at those who only have a hammer & insist every problem is a nail.

Note 1: I use Gnome simply because most of the people I support use it.. Trust me, I would not voluntarily expose myself to it for any other reason. Xfce is better (in part, by making no pretenses) & at lest KDE's bloat includes some real configuration abilities - altho 4 was 2 steps back & 1 forward (diagonal ;-)).. Gnomes biggest failure is its (intentional) lack of reasonable/intelligent configurability.

lord help us when nautilus, dolphin or pcmanfm are the best choices we have.. even windows explorer from win95 was better.. but then, ms changed that too.. Woe is us. of course, xfe has its good points.. just sayin'.. ;-)

If a user can make wine work better while running as root, then you, the wine programmer, have written a flawed product. Fix wine so it works, 'works' meaning 'does what the user needs'.

If a gid, uid or anything else is needed, don't tell the user to 'run such & such and take the answer & put it here'.. Getting the number is the programs job, _not_ the users. Make_It_Work. My philosophy when I programed was "program once, use many", hence, "make the programming complex so the user interface is simple".

and to all with your creative hacks, I'm glad they work for you.. but from the 'explanations' (really, the lack, thereof), it is obvious that many of you are engaging in more of that 'mental masturbation'.. If you want to help, make a gui tool that performs impeccably with no cli requirements (note 1), one with intelligent use of mouse controls (hint - we have 3 buttons & a wheel), one that uses 'common language' descriptions & not more of RMS's "computer's count from zero & you should too" b.s., and post it.. or go back to your mommy's cellar & close the windows.. some things are best not shown in public..

GNU Linux in general and Fedora( in particular) are very huge and author of the post might have met a particular person. How group of people behave in general is a probability curve. But, as far as I have experienced, majority of the people, across many distributions, are nice. Majority of them are volunteers.

Well, that blows. But OTOH, it's IRC, what do you expect. In my experience, IRC is the place that you hang with your mates and talk about BS. I have never used it as a mean to get a question answer. Forums/Mail List you get usually a higher S/N than IRC. Oh, IRC is quick, but, you get what you paid for (in that sense).

However, keep in mind that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Maybe they had good intentions, they just gave you hell :).

I use #fedora on my "big computer", I need Fedora 11 for a particular piece of software we run at work. It is a good system. But if the community turns you off, it is a good reason to look elsewhere.

FWIW, I also run Ubuntu Netbook Remix in my Eee, it is not that I'm good or against any particular Linux flavor.

"If a user can make wine work better while running as root, then you, the wine programmer, have written a flawed product. Fix wine so it works, 'works' meaning 'does what the user needs'. "

If user is getting wine to work better as root is complete lack of knowledge what they are doing in most cases. The issue is Linux permissions system to be exact the "Capability-based security". Some windows programs running in wine need to packet sniff and connect to ports under port 1024 or broadcast on network. NET_BIND_SERVICE, NET_BROADCAST and NET_RAW. At max. Also application you are running in wine defines if you need them. 90 percent of all applications that run in wine don't require those extras at all.

Problem is root give wine the complete house set of permissions Capability permissions. Including the means to delete everything. Remember Windows viruses do work in wine. So running as root can be kiss your complete system by by.

Notice something else. Todo the secuirty risking moves under windows. Applications don't even have to ask in a lot of cases.

Basically you cannot 100 percent protect a system from PEBKAC. Running lots of stuff as root is PEBKAC. The risks you are bringing are way larger than most presume. Also systems need feedback from the PEBKAC to know when they should allow stuff.

Really in my eyes there should be a GUI for using bindfs. Then most people would never need to run a filemanager as root. Most cases of users needing to override permissions they are not wanting to keep the permissions they just want data access.

Remember while running as root rm -rf / works. Or any other way of doing the same thing. nautilus, dolphin or pcmanfm as root can delete / and everything under it or anywhere else critical. Ask yourself serous-ally. Is this wise?.

Does not bindfs make more sense most of the time. Ie remount the section you want as you so you can do what is required. Just like UID and GID options made sense that don't work on two file systems. If they did remount drive overridden would have been all that was required. ie simple. Small program runs as root remounts drive allowed exits. Then from then on would have been used whatever tools you like.

When you really get down to the facts it is insane most of the time be as the root user.

Basically too many people come from the Windows model of run as administrator cures everything. Its also why windows is such a virus plague and why miss behaving programs can bring windows down so effectively. Mint open as root is not particularly wise.

Secure does not have to equal non GUI. Quick action rushed to save a few files is also when people typo badly. Going from a issue of a few lost files to a completely broken system. This is not unique to Linux users.

Yes I agree having drop to command line to remount or mount proper is a failure that should be fixed. Not by providing direct root for lots of applications. But providing correct interfaces to alter access permissions.

Most cases of users reaching for root show secuirty weaknesses in most cases. Sometimes maintenance weaknesses. Simple one like going to root to edit some config files. No logging or tracking of change that way. Large server arrays we use Cfengine and equal. This keeps track of what we did change. So we can roll backwards screw ups. Who else would not want the means to roll back mistakes? We are human.

Basically sit down and serous-ally list everything you do directly as root. Almost every single time you will find for simple to care for system its the wrong way. In fact running as root is dangerous and going in the direction stupid in most cases.

"If a user can make wine work better while running as root, then you, the wine programmer, have written a flawed product. Fix wine so it works, 'works' meaning 'does what the user needs'. "

If user is getting wine to work better as root is complete lack of knowledge what they are doing in most cases. The issue is Linux permissions system to be exact the "Capability-based security". Some windows programs running in wine need to packet sniff and connect to ports under port 1024 or broadcast on network. NET_BIND_SERVICE, NET_BROADCAST and NET_RAW. At max. Also application you are running in wine defines if you need them. 90 percent of all applications that run in wine don't require those extras at all.

Problem is root give wine the complete house set of permissions Capability permissions. Including the means to delete everything. Remember Windows viruses do work in wine. So running as root can be kiss your complete system by by.

Notice something else. Todo the secuirty risking moves under windows. Applications don't even have to ask in a lot of cases.

Basically you cannot 100 percent protect a system from PEBKAC. Running lots of stuff as root is PEBKAC. The risks you are bringing are way larger than most presume. Also systems need feedback from the PEBKAC to know when they should allow stuff.

Really in my eyes there should be a GUI for using bindfs. Then most people would never need to run a filemanager as root. Most cases of users needing to override permissions they are not wanting to keep the permissions they just want data access.

Remember while running as root rm -rf / works. Or any other way of doing the same thing. nautilus, dolphin or pcmanfm as root can delete / and everything under it or anywhere else critical. Ask yourself serous-ally. Is this wise?.

Does not bindfs make more sense most of the time. Ie remount the section you want as you so you can do what is required. Just like UID and GID options made sense that don't work on two file systems. If they did remount drive overridden would have been all that was required. ie simple. Small program runs as root remounts drive allowed exits. Then from then on would have been used whatever tools you like.

When you really get down to the facts it is insane most of the time be as the root user.

Basically too many people come from the Windows model of run as administrator cures everything. Its also why windows is such a virus plague and why miss behaving programs can bring windows down so effectively. Mint open as root is not particularly wise.

Secure does not have to equal non GUI. Quick action rushed to save a few files is also when people typo badly. Going from a issue of a few lost files to a completely broken system. This is not unique to Linux users.

Yes I agree having drop to command line to remount or mount proper is a failure that should be fixed. Not by providing direct root for lots of applications. But providing correct interfaces to alter access permissions.

Most cases of users reaching for root show secuirty weaknesses in most cases. Sometimes maintenance weaknesses. Simple one like going to root to edit some config files. No logging or tracking of change that way. Large server arrays we use Cfengine and equal. This keeps track of what we did change. So we can roll backwards screw ups. Who else would not want the means to roll back mistakes? We are human.

Basically sit down and serous-ally list everything you do directly as root. Almost every single time you will find for simple to care for system its the wrong way. In fact running as root is dangerous and going in the direction stupid in most cases.

that way you and others(reading your question) get option to give points to good people who help your question and give negative points to wicked people who just come to hang on and spoil your day.

irc channels for distros like fedora should maintain point system and selected helpers to help people in their areas of interest like games etc.. keeping open irc channel is poses many threats from ananymously logged in spammers and incidents like the one that happened with you, these idiots needs to be stopped. and its the fedora team's soul responsibility to look over here, because since im not owner of the #fedora channel or fedora project, so i cannot control the idiots roaming there and wooing off my distro's users.if fedora cannot keep moderators there to stop idiots like these, then its better to use some other distro where community is more organized, controlled and more helpful and idiots and spammers are banned permanently.

"If a user can make wine work better while running as root, then you, ... " etc

** You're missing the point. Sometimes we know that using a super-sharp steak knife is overkill for spreading butter, but we trust ourselves, we know what we want to achieve, and we want to get on with it while accepting the risk and knowing that any problem that may arise is down to us. We accept our actions and our risk assessments.

There are times when we wanna do what we wanna do, and it's hugely irritating when other people tell us not to - when all we can hurt is ourselves and we accept the risks :)

As a satisfied user of Fedoraforum who has never accessed #fedora could I add some observations.

From time to time I see a question posted then 8 hours later the poster re-posts to say that this question was posted eight hours ago without response - what kind of a support organization is this? From what I understand from the original post Mr. Hoogland would prefer no response than a response that doesn't exactly and concisely respond to the question as asked. If the people on irc or the forum had read the question, decided it was asking for something dangerous and/or foolhardy and chosen not to respond would the rant have been about how no-one among these so-called experts knows how to answer a simple question?

Google is very much my friend and whenever I use it to find a solution to my question I really value the ability to read what went before to see if the response is safe, applies to my problem and if there is a better way to do this. If, when I started using Linux my information sources included solutions that included logging in as root and doing potentially dangerous things without commenting that this is not a good thing to do and that there are smarter ways to achieve my ultimate aims then I would now be a danger to anyone who used the machines I manage and I would probably have burnt my fingers so badly I would have gone back to Windows while wondering how those egocentric asshats in the forum could publish such dangerous advice without a health warning.

On the occasions where I had to research something and did not find the solution to the itch I was scratching in one place I took the time to write a howto on the forum explaining that this was what I had found by researching lots of different sources and inviting experts to correct me if I was wrong. The experts politely corrected / enhanced my posts as necessary and many noobs thanked me for taking the time to write it in language they understood.

I cant speak to the way the OP was dealt with in terms of attitude etc. However, when you are troubleshooting you should ALWAYS ask why. In my experience often the user doesn't know how to accomplish what their objectives are but they are giving it a "best guess" which could actually be a detriment to their goals.

Having said that, there are ways to question the user in a civilized way and there is no valid justification for being rude or obnoxious to anyone

Anonymous said... May 9, 2011 8:10 AM "You're missing the point. Sometimes we know that using a super-sharp steak knife is overkill for spreading butter, but we trust ourselves, we know what we want to achieve, and we want to get on with it while accepting the risk and knowing that any problem that may arise is down to us. We accept our actions and our risk assessments."

Root is not a super sharp steak knife. Its more like a 1 meter or longer sword. Yes you can spreed butter with it. But might destroy the kitchen in the process.

Windows Root equal user is called System that MS normally forbids anyone from login in as. Ie Linux Root does not equal Windows Administrator.

Yes one is a super-sharp steak knife and one is a sword.

Really idea is one day no one ever needs to log into root on Linux directly.

This person clearly showed the problem. You cannot make a risk assessment if you don't know what in heck you are doing. Also the other people who you ask can take shock horror because they understand what you are suggesting is highly risky.

Samething go ask anyone how todo something highly risky you end up with tones of questions. This is human nature we try to prevent people from killing themselves.

Anonymous, I have nothing to do with #fedora, don't know the people involved and have never used it. My only reason for commenting was about the side comments about FedoraForum.org, where I do spend a lot of time.

FedoraForum.org is an independent forum that is not a part of either #fedora or FedoraProject. We're just users helping other users.

Fewt's a competent creator and maintainer of another distro (Fuduntu) and ended up in a series of heated discussions at FedoraForum, some involving one Admin. Both are talented guys and neither one is afraid of expressing opinions or emotions.

So, if my PM to him makes me a douche bag, oh well, then I'll accept that. As far as "elitist", sorry no. I couldn't code my way out of a paper bag and I'm just an ordinary user who likes Fedora

It is never correct to be rude to or about someone who is asking for help. Neither is it correct to be rude to or about someone who is trying to help. So no one seems, really, to be in the right.

The people in #fedora presumably had no way of knowing what you were trying to accomplish, and it is completely appropriate to ask what that might be, in case a safer or more effective method existed to accomplish your goal. This is standard practice in IT troubleshooting.

If I asked you how to get my chainsaw started so I can cut a stick of butter, would your first instinct be to help me figure out how to do that, or to ask me why I'm not using a butter knife? They were trying to help you cut your butter, and you seem to be angry they didn't help you start your chainsaw.

1.) Using a file manager as root to recover some files is far from using a chainsaw to cut a stick of butter.

2.) If you had explained that you wanted to cut the butter with a chainsaw just because that is what you wanted to do - then yes I'd help you get right on rolling.

They knew what I was trying to accomplish because I explained the situation - I was then still pointed towards the "right" way to do things that would take at least twice as long and involve lots of command line work.

I want to thank you for posting this blog entry and the follow-up responses to comments. I had downloaded and intended to install Bodhi Linux on my home computer, but after reading this thread, I decided to delete the iso instead. While I don't intend to have anything to do with Bodhi Linux in the future, I wish you the best of luck. If you make a habit of attacking people for trying to help you, you'll need it.

JeffHoogland. Problem here I have experienced it everywhere. Windows and Ubuntu forums included.

Most likely because I do a huge range different things. To be correct attempt to run a graphical file manager as root from a secuirty point of view would be stupid.

Fedora is a more secuirty aware bunch. Asking to run a text based file-manger like mc as root would have got less of a bad response. Asking to setup bindfs most likely would have got that was interesting maybe a few warning ie be-careful to select right directory.

Graphical filemanager as root high risk.textbased filemanager as root moderate risk.bindfs to change the permissions on the file system low risk. bindfs only a risk if you override the wrong filesystem.

Issue here is people come from windows and other backgrounds have no clue about secuirty. Say something in a channel where everyone is secuirty aware. Get told "you are being stupid or that is stupid". They get upset run away and maybe complain. Not waking up for one min what they were called is valid.

Worst argument to try to bring to a secuirty channel is that I can break my machine if I want.

Better answer from person asking for hell: Ok if this path is stupid. This is what I am trying todo . What are the options that are not stupid.

Of course I would have suspected they would have tried to go that path. And if you are like everyone else I have seen complain about this. Pig headiness of new user. That I have to be assisted to do a risky path. The people in fedora are giving their time free. They have no requirement to help you do something risky. They also have the right to tell you its stupid.

Some cases you will learn about items like bindfs that can alter you usage patterns.

Remember it takes two to tango. It also take two to argue. When one party believes they are in the right and the other party knows with documentation backing they are in the right. Its a solid road block.

Always love people that leave detailed opinionated comments and then don't have the spine to attach their name to it.

Saying that running a text based file manager as root is safer than running a GUI file manager as root is completely nonsensical. They both allow you to do the same thing - access all your files. As far as using bindfs goes in this instance - Why on earth would I want to go through all that headache? The drive was dieing, in fact it is on it's way to get RMAed right now. All I wanted to do was pull my data off of it.

I doubt I will be running off from Bodhi Linux any time soon as I am the project manager. I don't make people that are going to attack new people moderators and we certainly don't tolerate normal users doing it either.

This is kind of funny, in a way. Both sides appear to be in the wrong (though, if the events have been described accurately, #fedora more so).

But I can't help finding this terribly ironic, or tragic or indicative or something, in light of the recent brouhaha over the last couple months, over the Bodhi devs (including you, Jeff) on-going disinclination to implement package signing in their own distro, and refusal to take the matter as seriously as it merits.

Perhaps you've developed a bit of a thin skin about "security advice"?

I recently acquired an old but cheap laptop, and my sister recently acquired a new (and more powerful!) netbook, on both of which I installed Linux. I had been going to put Bodhi on both, on the grounds that my sister would love the beautiful interface, and I would love the low resource requirements, and I would as a user myself be in a better position to provide whatever support she would need. The repository/package signing issue persuaded me to install a Mint variant instead. Mint has worked out quite well enough.

I was still feeling a little sorry about not running Bodhi, though. Not as sorry now, though. While you were mostly right in this specific case (the butter-knife/steak-knife analogy pretty much sums up my position) your underlying attitude and comments here seems to me a sign confirming that I made the right choice.

I hope that you don't take this as a personal attack. You clearly know much more about the technical underpinnings of Linux than I do, but perhaps you might still, just the same, consider whether there could be some important gaps in your understanding.

Bernie

(PS: posting as anonymous, because this comment system has funny notions what "illegal characters" are)

You sure managed to get a ton of publicity for your start up "distro" that most people had never heard of before. Who would have thought that making a huge flap about nothing could be such a great marketing tool, as they say "All publicity is good publicity."

JeffHoogland. This is your problem. What is the secuirty difference between a textbased and gui based?

Form your answer you don't know it. So are a novice in secuirty ideals. In a channel that are pros in secuirty ideals. This setting up for disaster.

Biggest difference from a secuirty point of view is amount of active code. It serous-ally takes more lines of code to run a GUI program than the text based equal. More dependent libraries as well.

This a basic principle of secuirty. Least amount of code running with high privileges. So GUI application running as root is a sign of a failure. This is why packagekit was invented for management of installing packages. So the GUI of package installation systems flaws could not cause other problems.

Fedora is very secuirty based so suggesting GUI when a console program that uses less code todo the job is not going to work. Less code todo the job wins.

Also nautilus not compared to mc or equal. Midnight Commander has been tested running as root for a long time. Fairly much bug free.

Nautilus the file manager you were wanting to use. Is not what you call bug free. Really its not a file manager tested to that level.

bindfs is not that much of a headache. It is also following the model least am-mount of code as root.

Mount drive as root remount as bindfs. Not much of a issue at all. There is no particular reason why users could not be provided with a dbus based interface to set it up on need. A remount with permissions overridden option.

Please note bindfs is following the base principles of secuirty of the least amount of code running as high privilege to get the job done is the best.

Really project manager of a distribution is normally a sign of not being able to tolerate hornets nests. Either you grow that or you will be leaving. For the simple reason no matter what you do hornets nests will form.

Yes I have seen over my 15 years around linux a lot of Distribution project managers go. Lot of distributions is the 2 or 3 project managers who come from the user-base of the project who remain. Not the first 1. Reason the 2 and 3 have tolerance for areas hornets nests. Were differing options will exist.

Also will not be stupid like you and try to apply you options straight over the top of others. So far you keep on saying that the Fedora guys were wrong.

JeffHoogland you are just as wrong. You are believing there is no difference between GUI and non GUI file-managers for secuirty. That is complete falsehood. More code more risk of bugs simple.

Yes you are a first one history tell me unless you do adjust your attitude your distribution will suffer.

Remember fedora useability is second, secuirty is first. Each distribution ideals set what order those are in. Apparently Bodhi will have useability first, secuirty second. You cannot have it both ways with current existing software.

You have to choose. Before complaining at answers you need to understand what the project principals are. Secuirty first a few extra steps todo a job is not a consideration. If that is the secure way that is the way you do it.

Never cared much for Fedora anyway (though I have family members who swear by it). That's why I keep a puppy CD lying around. It is su by default. Maybe that's not that great for security reasons--but, as in this case, it is exactly what I need. There are PLENTY more live CD's around to do the same thing and I have a bunch of them all on the same spindle. I genuinely dislike trying to find an answer to a question by googling and trying to sort through (often useless) forum posts, but I ask the IRC channel as an absolute last resort... usually because I'm afraid my question will make me appear , umm, stupid.

Fedora it's a great distro but have a really big problem, it's the most unfriendly if compare to others like, for example ArchLinux. I test the setup process and have more doubts and problems in Fedora then ArchLinux. The people of fedora considering view the openSUSE setup process, I think if the fedore uses this, more many users (casual users and non professional specialists) use the distro.

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My name is Jeff Hoogland and you've landed on one of my Google pages. I currently work as adjunct faculty teaching mathematics at ITT Technical Institute in Springfield IL. I am a free software advocate and part time code jockey. You can learn more about me from my personal website.

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